A Stark World
by qwanderer
Summary: Loki is always holding something back, and it's a terrible day when he'll be forced to play his last card. He's used to unknown factors screwing with his plans, and he doesn't know what will happen if he makes use of the weapons he's been holding in reserve. But hopefully, that means no one else will see them coming. - Midnight Mystery series, Frostiron and Hulkeye slash, Darcy
1. Freedom of Information

**Chapter 1: Freedom of Information**

Darcy and Hel still sat in the walled garden, talking, on the same swing and the same branch. It had been days; this was unprecedented. Hel hadn't felt the need to show off her latest castle setup, since Darcy seemed content enough to swing and watch the fireflies. Also, Hel had tired herself out showing new things to the previous set of visitors. She was more satisfied to sit in the stillness than she had been since her first year here. And Darcy was curious, asking endless questions, first about magic, and then about Loki and Asgard, and she spoke a great deal herself, as well. They never wanted for diversion.

"You have an unprecedented store of knowledge, for one so young," Hel commented as Darcy was expounding on the various ways in which choosing clothing could impact people's opinion of you on Earth.

"It's the information age," Darcy said, shrugging. "Young people on Earth right now have unprecedented access to information of pretty much any kind we can imagine at any time. So we collect what we're interested in, and that makes it stick really well. I'm not that unique. There's this huge network of people all over the world having these fascinating conversations all over the place. I'm never really _not_ learning something." She looked curiously at Hel. "That's another thing I've been wondering. I know most of the 'immortals' on the other realms have Allspeak even if they don't have any other magic, but do they, like, tie it into any kind of magical communications system? Or are they all pretty much at the 'pony express' level of ease of communication? Cause I gotta say, I don't think much of Asgard's whole advanced culture if they can't do some kind of telecommunications. Ours are a big part of why we're so impressed with ourselves."

Hel frowned. "There are some prized devices that pass communications over distances, but if there is a greater network anywhere, I have not heard of it. If any of the Realms were to devise such a thing, it would most likely be Svartalfheim, but I have not met many of their craftsmen, and Father tends to avoid their realm."

"That's kinda weird," said Darcy, raising her eyebrows. "I'd think you would've heard more about how things are in other places. Why don't the craftspeople of Sfarmur-whatever visit? I mean, back home Hell is this whole weird myth tied up in the whole Jesus thing and there's supposed to be lots of fire and pain, so clearly we've forgotten most of what we've heard. But the other realms remember each other, right? Visit often, if they're friendly? But I don't see a lot of tourists showing up at your gate. I guess they all aren't quite as mortal as us humans, so the whole frozen-in-time thing isn't as irresistible. But still, you'd think you'd get more traffic."

Hel laughed softly. "In truth, you're not much worse off than the other realms with regard to knowledge of this place. Most in Asgard know I existed; the birth of a royal princess is not something that goes without notice. But a few years after my disappearance, my father found that more than half the court believed me dead. It amused us, and we decided not to correct them. Nor do we encourage secrecy; and yet the rumors persist. You must realize that Niflheim existed for millennia before my birth; the shadow of its legend was ingrained in the minds of the people. My own existence simply merged with that mythos."

Darcy raised her eyebrows. "Really? You isolate yourself on purpose?"

"I don't think of it that way," said Hel, "but I suppose I do. I enjoy being a ghost story to those criminals who appear here, and whenever I want for company, Father can find someone interesting to bring. I believe he's frightened that if Helheim is known as something real and commonplace, someone will find a way to duplicate my magic, hurt me even on my own ground. I have more confidence than that, but I humor him."

Darcy bit her lip, frowning. "That doesn't seem like a very fun way to spend a zillion years."

Hel smiled, placidly but somewhat acknowledging. "I've been hearing more and more, of late, about what I'm missing. Perhaps, in the future, my priorities will change."

"I'm just so used to being plugged into what's happening all over Earth at any given time, and the Moon now, too, now there's people hanging out on it. I like knowing things. And without a way of spreading knowledge, it's hard to get people to change their minds about things, change the way they live. I've been talking to Thor, Jane, Steve and Josh about it, because there's a lot about Asgard that they'd like to sort of adjust. Me, I blog, and I know I change people's minds, change the way they think about and treat other people. Asgard, though? It's gotta be a bitch to even just take a survey, find out what people already think, let alone effectively argue with more than one person at once."

"You are indeed ambitious," said Hel, with that astonished and just slightly condescending smile she sometimes got.

"You betcha," said Darcy. "I aim to save more than one world from their own stupid prejudices. And I'm making progress on Earth, and I'll figure out how to play the game in Asgard, eventually."

"I will be most curious to see how that works out," said the queen of Niflheim.

Darcy just smiled, confident and knowing, not wavering at all under the weight of years and the power of an absolute sovereign.

* * *

The SHIELD files in this round of hacked reading material were... disquieting. Not in any way that Loki could pinpoint, but the _feel_ of the tiny signs was off, was frighteningly familiar in a way that he could not consciously register. There was enough information that the patterns in it were very subtle. Someone was looking for something. It reminded him, perhaps, of Thanos, but Thanos was still securely in his cell. That was quite clear. The files did not have his exact location, but it was among a possible handful of facilities with the necessary security.

But Thanos also likely had other allies. And Loki very much feared that they would find him, sooner rather than later.

Tony found him, perhaps an hour and a half later, staring into space and trying frantically to come up with a viable plan.

"Anything in this batch?" the engineer asked, seeing what was up on the screen.

"Nothing definitive," Loki answered absently.

Tony frowned at the wording. "So something? Something vague." He leaned over Loki's shoulder to peer at the security log that was currently open. "That is not about possibly spacetime-bending research."

"No, nothing troubling in the usual areas," Loki agreed.

"You're worried." Loki gave him a quelling look, but Tony continued, relentless. "No, don't give me that, you're like, _really worried._ And that scares me, because baby, you can handle _just about anything._ So whatever it is, I want to know about it."

"It is nothing," Loki insisted.

"Now we _both_ know that's a lie. Let me rephrase. I _need_ to know."

"If you need to know, I'll tell you," Loki said, anger starting to spark green light in his eyes.

"Hey, we're both Avengers here, right? You know, people keep telling me there's this thing called teamwork, and it means sharing with other people, actually letting them _help_ you."

"This is not Avengers business, and this is none of your concern!"

"Oh, I'm starting to get _real_ concerned," Tony continued relentlessly. "This isn't something little, is it? This is huge. We need to be ready. _Tell me,_ so neither of us gets ourselves killed again, all right?"

"That will not be necessary. I can handle this myself." Loki had gone stiff and cool, defenses rolling up across his face and closing him off. But Tony knew where the chinks were.

"Right, I've heard that before. Mostly outta my mouth before I did something stupid. You sure that's the precedent you wanna set? Because I'm still kinda wavering on the issue, but I'm starting to learn that letting people help is the best way to stay alive to fight another day. And I'm gonna _keep trying_ to help you, whether you want me to or not. That clear?"

Loki bared his teeth in seething rage. "You... see to your own defenses and _LEAVE ME ALONE!_" And the god disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Tony blinked at the suddenly empty space. "Ouch," he said, grimacing. "_That_ can't be a good sign." He looked worriedly at the emptiness for a few more minutes before asking Jarvis for any information about unusual things happening recently. "Oh, and if Loki shows up in your surveillance feeds, let me know where he is, 'kay?"

"Jasper has informed me that Mr. Albastru is in the Stark Vistas facility private lab," Jarvis answered, "and that he appears to be sulking, and observing Dr. Banner's experiments in progress."

Tony made a tutting sound as he glanced in the direction of the doorway Loki could have used with much less effort than his teleportation. "Can't stand to be on the same planet as me, huh? I'm hurt."

And he was, just a little. But the moon base was still home, at least. If Josh ever lit off for the other realms, Tony'd know he was really in the doghouse.

But then, that had been less Joshua Albastru, and more Loki Liesmith, than he'd seen in a while.

* * *

Clint had set up a little archery range in the moon lab. Even the deep underground part of the facility was big enough that he didn't really have to set up within sight of where Bruce was working, but he had anyway. He did love to show off.

"Are you sure you should be up and around already?" Bruce said, watching Clint with concern.

"Okay, A), Josh did a little of his magic mojo on me, ankle's all but healed, just a little stiff. B), there's a reason I chose today to practice moon gravity arcs. Not putting my whole weight on the thing, am I?" He grinned at Bruce.

Bruce smiled back agreeably enough. "All fair points. Just don't push yourself - even one sixth of your weight could prove significant if you're not quite ready to be on your feet again."

"Are you doubting my healing abilities?" said a silky voice from behind Bruce.

"GAH!" Bruce jumped and glared at the blue-skinned figure behind him. "DO NOT STARTLE ME when I am on the moon," he snapped. "This facility is way too vulnerable to take that risk. Tony swore up and down that his safety measures could keep everyone up here alive even with Hulk on a rampage, and I think he might take it a little personally if we prove him wrong, you want that, M&M?"

"I am not terribly concerned with Tony's feelings at this very moment," was Loki's reply, but his slightly pained expression gave away the lie.

Bruce frowned in concern. "You two fighting?" he asked, keeping one eye on the sequence he was running.

Loki didn't answer, only took a seat at the lab bench, hunching down and peering at the machinery Bruce was using.

"I'm going to take it from the lack of indignant complaints about Tony's behavior this time around that it's not anything he did that you're upset about."

Clint was watching them, no longer launching arrows at his improvised target. He'd always sort of been wary of the ease between them, the guy who used the Hulk to nearly bring down the Helicarrier and the guy who smashed him into the floor for it. But now he was trying to see their connection in a different light. With the solidity of the bow in his hands, he watched them as he would watch a target, waiting and gathering information and taking himself out of the equation.

Bruce was patience itself, teasing words out of Loki with a deft combination of leading questions and open silences. And Loki did open up to him, trust him, despite the fact that he knew precisely what Hulk was capable of.

"It's not his fault," the blue-skinned man was saying. "But I can't tell him what he says he needs to know. I can't explain... sometimes I know so little myself why I do what I do until I have hindsight to make it clearer. I am a creature of deception, and too often I deceive myself, but I can be nothing but what I am. I have been the Liesmith for a thousand years and I shall be for many thousand more. I am not a being that inspires trust, or love. I will always, eventually, disappoint."

"Tony trusts you," Bruce told him.

"Yes, he does," Loki agreed, eyes mournful. "And I very much fear that that mistake will cost him dearly."

"So you push him away. I recognize that routine. The better his intentions, the worse that makes it, I'm guessing."

"He wants only to help me. But I cannot ask him for help, not with this. I have only the barest sketches of plans but they all, without fail, at their hearts revolve around protecting him! He has made me sentimental. He is my weakness. And this is an enemy I cannot show weakness to."

"Why not?"

Loki looked startled at the straightforwardness of the question, then thoughtful as he mulled it over. "That is what he'll be looking for. If I show none, he'll look all the harder."

Bruce looked a bit worried, and examined Loki sternly. "Which enemy, exactly, are we talking about here?"

And that was when things began to fall apart, slowly and yet epically, like a glacier cracking and falling into the sea.

There was a shudder that went all the way through the base, and Jasper's concerned-sounding British voice said, "Unauthorized entry to the Stark Vistas facility. Identified as the criminal Thanos. Contact with Earth has been disrupted. Please evacuate this facility via the indicated escape vehic-"

There was a larger shudder, a faint boom, and Jasper's voice cut off at the same time as the main lights cut out. In the deep lab, all eyes went to the dimensional door. The ever-present, reassuring indicator light next to the keypad... was dark. Bruce squeezed his eyes shut, and breathed very deliberately.

Loki swore passionately. "He knows I'm here," he said. "I've been veiling my location, but not entirely blocking, and there are only so many places I could be on a cursed little airless rock like this. He will destroy the place to get to me, and to Tony."

Clint nodded grimly, stowing his bow and retrieving the arrows from his target by the glow of the emergency lights. It had seemed like a good idea to practice shooting while compensating for moon gravity, but he hadn't actually believed he'd be making use of his new knowledge so soon. "We'll stop him," the archer said. "We've done it before."

"It will not be nearly so simple this time," Loki snapped. "Keep yourselves from harm. I will deal with this." He shifted into his Aesir form and leather armor, which was hardly ever a good sign.

"Yeah, you have a better plan than you did last time?" Clint asked pointedly. "One that doesn't involve you dying?"

"Yes," Loki answered. "I am going to..." the former Asgardian prince sighed deeply. "...go get help."

And with that, the god was gone.

"...Great," muttered Clint, now by himself in an isolated lab with an increasingly unsettled Bruce Banner.

Bruce was scrambling for a favorable answer to the question of whether he could get the dimensional door open again. "It's not the crystal," he said as he pried open the panel and saw the arc pod glowing within its shielding. "Not the circuitry. It _should_ be working. But there are too many factors to account for, with a millennia-year-old sorcerer in the mix. He could be doing something to stabilize local spacetime..." The physicist took off his glasses and rubbed at his face. "This is not good."

Clint approached him cautiously. "Hey, Bruce, listen to me, you're gonna be okay," he said. "You wanna use one of the escape pods?"

"Right, because being in an enclosed metal shell out there in hard vacuum with all the other people trying to get back to Earth, for three days, is going to be so much easier on my nerves than being down here out of everybody's way." Bruce looked exasperatedly at Clint. "No, I'm sticking here."

Clint opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, there was a rumbling in the metal and rock surrounding them, louder this time, and without stopping to consider Clint threw himself protectively over Bruce, just in time to catch the brunt of a shower of plaster, metal, rocks and silica dust that rained down on them.


	2. Allocation of Assets

**Chapter 2: Allocation of Assets**

SHIELD was in a frenzy, like a stirred-up anthill. Thanos was free, the staff was gone, several high-clearance personnel gone with it. This was bad enough. They'd barely defeated Thanos the first time. Tony knew now why Loki had been so worried. But now, the moon base gates were down and Jasper wasn't transmitting.

Tony was consumed with the need to know what was happening up there, whether Loki and Bruce and everyone else up there were still safe. He knew he'd built the thing solid, but there was really no such thing as Thanos-proof.

There was no way to contact Thor, Steve, or Sif, even through Heimdall, since they were incommunicado for the duration of the negotiations. Darcy was offworld as well, and three of the team had been on the moonbase before communications went dark, leaving Earth with only Tony and the spiders. The three of them were gathered in the tower, assessing the situation and planning a next move, when the transmission came through.

It was Thanos's face on the screen.

"This little rock is now mine," he said. "Earth, I would be more than happy to leave alone, for now. But in exchange for that, I need something from you. I know that Loki of Asgard is still alive, and that he has been masquerading as one of your heroes, your Avengers, calling himself Midnight Mystery. He was here, and I hoped he might face me like the hero he pretends to be, but he fled with the rest. Return him to me, and you buy yourself time for your world, time to prepare your heroes to face their inevitable defeat. You have one day."

The screen blanked to static. Tony frowned and stared for half a moment, before he returned to life and to motion, on mission. "Jarvis, that from base systems? Any additional info?"

"No hidden or piggybacked signal was detected," the AI said. "Jasper has made no contact. There is no indication that he is still functional."

"Damn," said Tony. "All right, escape pods? They go up?"

"All are active, functional and transmitting," Jarvis said, and at least that was a huge relief. "All but three have launched. Their reports of who is aboard leave fourteen people unaccounted for who were known to be in the facility at the time contact was broken."

Tony nodded, a wince of pain crossing his face. "Okay, show me the list."

Natasha watched this exchange closely, then asked, "J, could anyone else have picked up that transmission?"

"Yes, Agent Romanov," Jarvis answered. "It is spreading across the internet as quickly as might be expected."

The list was up, and Tony took in the names. Joshua Albastru, Bruce Banner, Clint Barton. Four resort employees, seven guests. It was pretty clean. There had been more than 800 guests and 70 employees on base. Only a handful of injuries were being reported by those in the pods. But a single person unaccounted for was too many.

Thanos was in his base. He'd taken out J2. He wanted Loki, and he might have Bruce, might have taken Clint's mind again.

"I need to get up there now," Tony said.

"That's not the priority right now," Natasha said forcefully. "We need to help SHIELD secure their facilities, find out what happened, and make sure the evacuation goes smoothly. Prep for what might happen if he doesn't get ahold of Loki."

"It _won't_ happen if we get there first and take him out before time's up," Tony insisted, opening programs and considering possibilities.

"That's impossible, isn't it?" Peter said. "Even at accelerations on the edge of human endurance, rockets with optimal weight/fuel ratios, you can't get to the moon in less than 24 hours."

Tony just kept working.

"You're building a full-size pressure lock?" Peter said, looking at the designs. "But there are only two gates to the moon, both opening on pressurized areas, and neither of which function. But it's not hardware, at least not on this end. So you've got two working gates here. You're planning on connecting them to each other?"

"Of course, send one of 'em out the way I did with the initial moonbase installation. Don't know where it'll end up, which PERB units are still working. You start dialing the satellites, Jarv'll give you a hand, I've gotta go gut the resort gate for the second full-size arc pod, no one but me and Josh have the clearance for that." And he left in a breathless rush, going for his suit and leaving the tower.

Nat shook her head and got on the phone with Fury, doing damage control as well as she could.

Peter settled in with a PERBcomm in a vacuum chamber and Jarvis's list of numbers, dialing the ones actually on the moon first, but it was obviously some kind of localized disruption, because those wouldn't open. He said a little prayer before dialing the first lunar satellite, but no go. Peter breathed out noisily, and tried the next.

None of the sattelites in lunar orbit were reachable by PERBcomm. Peter let his head fall against the vacuum chamber with a thump.

"Tony's not gonna be happy about this," he muttered. "Even with a perfectly placed geosynch sattelite it'll still take more than a day to reach safe lunar landing."

"Actually," Jaris interrupted, "I believe you'll find the next number provides an acceptable alternative. It is a commsat orbiting lunar L1 lagrange."

Peter lit up when he heard that. "You're kidding. All right, let's try it."

* * *

Hel and Darcy were back on the subject of healing magic, Darcy style, which was a difficult subject for Hel because it was so different from the healing that Loki performed. But she was managing to say some things that Darcy could get meaning out of.

"Okay so, what you're saying is, basically I should be focusing on the fact that I want to turn back time for a person, their whole selves, brains and everything?"

"Yes, that is, in essence, the difference between what you do now and what you may want to do occasionally. It will be more difficult, but not beyond your strength. I don't know that I could explain it better to anyone who is so blind to their own power as you are. It frightens me, how unaware of your power you are."

"Oh, trust me, I'm pretty cognizant," said Darcy, her mouth forming the grim line that it always did when she thought about how wrong her spells could go.

Hel nodded. "So you realize that you should not attempt such a spell unless the consequences of doing nothing would be even more grim than those of failure. When you can, stick to what you know."

"Will do," said Darcy.

Then Hel looked up, to the gate, as if at an unheard noise. "Father is here," she said. "I did not expect him during your stay. I fear something has happened." The huge gates drew open swiftly and silently with a gesture, and the fireflies froze in their places as Hel drew her attention away from that more maintenance-heavy aspect of the illusion.

Loki was there, looking like the father Hel had always known, pale-skinned and clad in green and leather. That was odd in itself, since, most often, of late, Loki had appeared here and in the memories she received from him as the blue-skinned Joshua that was his current identity on Midgard.

Darcy raised her eyebrows at him. "Woah, _so_ not used to that look on you, Josh," she said.

"Darcy," he said, laying serious eyes on her. "I would ask you to trust me, and then I would ask you, for a time, to call me Loki."

"I... can do that," she said, taken aback but adjusting fast. She had, after all, gotten used to calling his female form Rhea, when they'd gone out shopping together on one memorable occasion. And she did trust him. She trusted him, at least, to have a reason for everything he did, and to not do anything that would make Tony really irretrievably upset. Which, when she considered Tony's priorities, was pretty good, for a god of chaos.

"Good," he said. "I need your help. I need not only your magic, but also your expertise in people, and in deception, and in being powerful in unexpected ways."

Hel blinked at her father. He really did respect these mortals as equals, in ways Hel was only just beginning to fathom.

"Okay," said Darcy. "I'm your girl. What's the issue, Loki?" She tasted the name, testing it, slotting it into its new place in her head.

"Thanos's power has returned, and he threatens the Earth and its heroes once again."

"Okay," she said, hiding her fear. She'd never faced Thanos, only heard the stories and seen the footage on the news, back when she was still working her way through school and only knew about magic what she'd managed to catch from Thor's jumbled comments. "What do you want me to do?"

"He would cause the death of every human on Earth, every living being beyond that, if he could. He is after me, but he understands the world a certain way, and I believe you might prove a perfect distraction. He has a young female associate who I believe is with him now, no more than a faithful dog to serve and guard her master. If he thinks you are the same to me, he will come after you, believing that you are the weak spot in my defense. I want you to draw him in until you can feel his teeth on your neck, then strike, show him that you are _anything_ but weak."

Darcy laughed a bit weakly, hiding a shiver. "That doesn't sound to me like a smart thing to do at _all,_" she told him, shaking her head.

"I would understand if you refused."

"No, I'll do it," she said. "Do what I can to save the world, usually. But I'm going to need to know a lot more about the guy."

"He's not like your average tyrant, needing to be worshiped and gathering as many followers as he can under his control, convincing them of his superiority," Loki said.

Darcy raised her eyebrows. "Oh, you mean like you and your 'made to be ruled' performance?"

He smiled bitterly. "Yes, like me, and like the self-proclaimed Allfather I was, on some level, still striving to please." He shook his head. "No, Thanos does not want rule, only chaos, to raze the universe, burn it to ashes. He does not want nor seek power, outside of that which will allow him to see, to cause and to savor death. Especially the deaths of heroes. He lives to bring down heroes. He will seek out their weakness, and he will take advantage of it."

"So the pathological narcissism of the cult leader, without the fear and need to control everything around them of the more usual tyrant. I'm gonna bet he'll still react in a lot of the same ways. Especially now that he's spent time knowing he's not so untouchable as he'd like to think. He'll go for where he thinks he can win his battles first, maybe. Out of all the heroes..." Darcy pressed her lips together and smiled, bitter but accepting, when she realized what Loki was getting at. "So you come get me," she concluded. "Little ol' Darcy Lewis, newly minted Avenger, just another human girl." She bit her lips and surveyed him skeptically. "Really think I'll be able to stand up to him? This guy that you, 'I am a god, humans are ants' Loki, are shaking in your big boots thinking about?"

Loki sighed, looking down at her with guilt and no little amount of terror. "He will not easily underestimate me again," he said. "And the best hope I have now -" He closed his eyes. "The best hope I have now is trusting that my allies can handle themselves against him. I have done what I could to ensure that Earth has a chance against him. And much of that has been in training you."

Darcy blinked at him, shocked and skeptical. "Right, sure, this was your plan all along," she managed to respond.

He smiled slightly at that. "Half the secret behind developing a reputation as a plotter is never revealing what you intended and what came into place organically," he told her. "But whatever I intended, you have become one of Earth's best hopes. My secret weapon."

She squinted knowingly at him, an accusatory moue to her mouth.

"Well, one of them," he remedied.

"So what's the plan? What's big evil up to?" Darcy asked, wanting to get to business ASAP now that she was realizing how big and scary this job was.

"He has taken the moon," said Loki. "We will take it back, if we can. I cannot tell you every part of my plans; some of them are dependent on absolute secrecy, others on my own somewhat vague knowledge of them. But I know your strengths. I will ask that you save whoever you can, and protect yourself, as well. I may not be able to prioritize your welfare and I trust that you will do so in my stead."

Their eyes locked, and Darcy nodded.

"Not everyone can be trusted with that," Loki said. "But you, I think, can be. And so I will entrust you with something else, as well." He slipped something into her pocket. "Keep this within reach, but keep it hidden."

Darcy's eyes widened as she realized what it was, and she nodded sharply. "I'll take care of it," she said.

"See that you do," said Loki.

And, after one last word in his daughter's ear, he led Rose Witch out of Helheim, and on to battle.


	3. Show of Confidence

**Chapter 3: Show of Confidence**

The chaos assaulted Bruce's ears, the dust his eyes and nose and lungs, the rocks and metal had cut into his flesh, and there was one thing that kept it all from overwhelming him and turning him. Clint's body, pressed against his, Clint's breath pained in his ear.

Bruce kept his eyes closed, and he breathed, slow and deliberate, fighting not to cough despite the harsh silica dust suspended in the air (and Bruce had seen the effects of that kind of damage, mines, construction or demolition sites, glass or ceramics factories with too little regard for worker safety, and it was nothing simple or pleasant)(the knowledge only fed his panic, and he tried to put it aside, despite Clint's coughing), and focused on that one thing, that reason to stay still and calm, that warmth and gentle weight that was Clint. He likely needed medical attention. There was nothing to be done immediately about the dust, but Bruce needed to check for other injuries. He had a job, and he had to stay in control and see it through.

Bruce breathed and worked moisture through his mouth and swallowed a few times, cleared his throat (which to his relief was only slightly painful), and when he thought he could talk without coughing, he turned slightly in the direction that Clint occupied, and he said, "Can you move? Are you hurt?"

Clint shifted a little, taking the slight pressure of his weight off Bruce, but when he tried to answer, the archer fell into another coughing fit, harsher and more painful sounding. When that calmed, there were some wet noises, not too distressing, then the distinct noise of Clint spitting.

"'M not bleeding out or anything," he said, and his voice was rough. "Hurt, though, yeah, you could say that. Ankle's banged up all to hell again." There was another cough. "Bleeding from _somewhere._ And I can't... uh, I can't see much of anything." That was the only admission that made Clint sound like he was nervous about it.

"Okay," said Bruce. He opened his own eyes now, to take stock of their situation. "Good news," he said to Clint. "I can't see much either. I think the emergency lights got taken out."

"Right," Clint said, sounding more composed. "Lemme see what I can do about that." There was some rustling motion, a grunt of pain, and a burst of light as Clint opened his phone, casting a dim, cool light over the two of them and the debris that surrounded them. They blinked at each other, two shocked, dusty faces, Clint's streaked with blood. The archer smiled a bit when he saw Bruce at last. "Sight for sore eyes, Doc. How about you? What's the damage?"

Bruce's head pounded, and his eyes and throat stung, there was a shallow cut near one elbow and one hand had lost some skin across the knuckles. "Not a lot... and still just about too much," Bruce answered as he shifted away slightly. "You should get to... a safe distance."

"Hey, I'm not _leaving_ you here," Clint said.

"You should," Bruce growled.

"I really don't think that's my best course," Clint said. "I'm on an airless planet, the AI's down and I'm not exactly Mr. Techno-Wizard. I'll stick close to you."

"I'm about to be _really_ useless in that area! Hulk's not exactly known for his temperate and considered decisions, let alone understanding delicate equipment!" Bruce's hands came up to tangle in his hair, and his skinned knuckles screamed at him, making him shudder. "GET AWAY!" he yelled!

"Nowhere to go," Clint answered, a breath of laughter in his hoarse voice. "Come on. I trust you. We're gonna get through this. You're not gonna turn."

The next sound to escape Bruce was a groan of horrified laughter, punctuated by a cough. "That's some high expectations you've got for me," he said, both harsh and sad.

"Yeah, well," said Clint, laying a hand on Bruce's arm. "You're the genius that gives Tony Stark a run for his money, so. I think you can handle it."

"Okay. Okay." Bruce resigned himself to a hard battle for control, and he shifted again, freeing himself from the tangle of debris, settling against the nearest wall and curling up, hands on his knees. "I can handle it."

"What do you need?"

"Quiet."

So Clint was quiet.

* * *

Darcy and Loki made quite a picture together, appearing out of thin air in what was once the main atrium of the Stark Vistas Resort. It was now somewhat destroyed, and on top of the rubble stood Rose Witch, skin cream and hair dark and raiment black, grey and the rose pink that brought out the color in her lips and cheeks. Beside her stood Loki, hair dark and skin pale and clothed in black and gold and the green that brought out his eyes.

They had chosen correctly, and Thanos sat nearby, on a precariously perched piece of concrete and metal that had once been an upper walkway. His rough-hewn face lit with malicious joy at the sight of them, standing bold and defiant before him.

"You've come." He stood, stalking towards them, usually heavy tread much lighter here, but giving him no trouble. "But who is this?"

"I don't believe you've met my protege," answered Loki, all confidence and mild superiority. "Rose Witch; a recent addition to the Avengers."

"Ah, yes, the Avengers," Thanos said, eyeing them contemplatively. "Your team of heroes, your world's defense. But where are they, the rest of them? And you, where is your costume, the armor of Midnight Mystery?"

"I have no more need of him," said Loki, shrugging. "He was only a convenient lie, to ingratiate myself to them for a time. But I am Loki, and Loki only. I do not welcome their help in this. You are mine to finish."

"Or perhaps, now that I have exposed your identity to the rabble of your new home planet, the rest of the heroes have abandoned you to your fate to buy time for their world." Thanos grinned. "Perhaps this is all the force you can muster... your favored pet." He eyed Darcy appreciatively. "I see why you chose to keep her."

Darcy glared back at him, but did not answer, did not contradict his implication about their relationship.

"I'll take care of her first," Thanos said. "You'll enjoy watching her fall, I think, noble as you've become?" He looked to Loki, but the god gave him no satisfaction. He returned his attention to Darcy, with eyes like a stalking cat.

She drew back from him, clumsy in this gravity, showing fear and panic she had plenty of to show. Thanos looked delighted.

It irked her to play this part, ran against the grain of her independent soul, but the more he smiled, the more she knew it was the right play. She'd chosen to go without gloves today, her bare hands working better with this different image, and it felt more vulnerable, too, holding out mere human skin in his direction. She moved defensively, sending blasts of magical energy at him that did nothing (and were not calculated to); she walked the line between helpless and heroic, squeaking in fear when the hits came too close for comfort, every retreat actually drawing him closer.

Finally he had her up against a wall, a boulderlike fist raised as if to crush her barehanded, and he probably could, too. This was the moment. She put all her will into one spell, a transformation, her best and most unexpected strength. She aimed at his core, right in front of her and unprotected, willing him to become a tree. An Oriental maple, for some reason. She never planned these things ahead, just went with what felt right. Maybe it was the purple. In any case, he began to change.

He stiffened first, then began to thin and branch, arms reaching out and growing rigid. But while he still had a face, he showed surprise, then determination, and the transformation slowed, then he looked confident and smug, and slowly but steadily began to turn back into himself again.

"So you do have teeth," he said, gloating. "But nowhere near enough to pierce my hide." He laughed as he stood again, all himself.

Then gasped as Loki came out of nowhere and stabbed him in the neck. "Leave that to me," the trickster hissed before twisting and then pulling out his wicked little knife.

Thanos brought a hand to his neck and slumped forward, weakened enough that he was not immediately able to stand again. But before the two sorcerers could take advantage of the opportunity, several figures rushed in from other parts of the base, their bounding almost comical but for the weapons they carried, some pointing guns at them, one with a very familiar-looking staff.

The woman had grey-green skin and long black hair and she wore gold and black armor. She rushed to Thanos's side and stood over him, warning his attackers away. Since Darcy could only inconsistently shield herself from bullets, she complied, and Loki followed suit. "That would be Gamora," he informed Darcy. They stood together and surveyed the newcomers.

Other than Gamora, Thanos's guard dog, the others that surrounded them all had blue-glowing eyes. A moderately muscular Asian man, a tiny girl with masses of red hair floating around her, and a taller woman... crap, was that Maria Hill?

"Agent Hill," Darcy greeted the woman who was now pointing a gun at her. "Guess that explains how the big bad knew about our blue M&M here, doesn't it?"

"Don't move," the agent replied coolly. "You're expendable. Dead or alive. Capture orders are only for Loki."

"Good to know," Darcy replied, not cowed, deciding playing frightened mouse wasn't going to do her any more good. Her eyes searched the other slaved figures - no one else she recognized, but one more oddity. A guy with pale blue skin and armor with a familiarly alien aesthetic. "Who on Earth is that guy?" she asked, trying to place it. "Or... not on Earth. Wait, I know, you're Kree."

Thanos was standing now, having healed himself, but purple-black blood still streaked down his neck as a reminder. His expression was hard. Gamora approached the two Avengers, wielding the scepter threateningly.

"Quite a prize, isn't he?" She smiled. "I learned many interesting things when I took Agent Hill's mind. The location of Thanos, yes, but also of some other interesting prisoners. Korath of the Kree, for one, and he proved very useful in helping to restore Thanos's powers."

Loki's eyes narrowed. "You've been inside SHIELD security for days now," he said, thinking back to the subtle wrongness of the security logs. "I'd hardly have credited you with the patience."

"For my master," Gamora said, inclining her head in Thanos's direction, "I would do anything." She stalked towards Darcy, who didn't want to move for fear of being shot, but still her hand went unobtrusively nearer her pocket, from which a thin gold chain dangled. The scepter drew nearer to Darcy's chest. "And soon, so will you."

Darcy drew back, but still the scepter touched her, just above her heart, and a blue glow found its way into her eyes.

"Slave of Thanos," Gamora addressed her. "Tell us, how can we most easily capture Loki?"

"Well, I dunno," Darcy said. "He doesn't tell me everything, and I'm really not sure how he does most of what he does. Plus, I don't know what Thanos can do, so." Darcy turned to stand beside Gamora and contemplate Loki. "You got any magic blocking fields?"

Loki could see, because he was looking for it, how the clumsily fabricated blue glow didn't quite track with Darcy's eyes as she moved. It was something of a relief, but Thanos was sure to notice soon how his newest slave wasn't actually connected into his little mental network. He mounted a distraction.

He sailed across the atrium towards Thanos, elegance kept in his stride only through hours of practice at this gravity. "Give her back!" Loki shouted, counterfeiting a rage that indicated that Darcy was more to him than the whole of Earth. In truth, it would not have been an incredible stretch, but for the rest, he thought of Hel. He flew at Thanos, and the titan dodged, startled. They began a combat that would, hopefully, buy her time.

The Asian man joined the fray as well, but Darcy pretended not to care that Loki was fighting two-on-one, outmatched. She walked beside Gamora, discussing plans and the equipment that was available on Thanos's ship. She steered them in the direction of Maria, and Darcy knew she had to be quick with this, she had to be clean. Everything depended on Agent Hill being able to fight straightaway after she was freed from the scepter. That left her with one plan, and she thought Hill would likely have agreed with her assessment.

Two paces after they passed Hill, Darcy abandoned the illusion on her eyes and launched herself at the agent without warning, pouring magic into her and willing her back to normal - brain and all. She turned back the clock, all the days since Hill had been turned. The agent faltered, and Darcy whispered in her ear: "You're on the moon. Got taken by Thanos. You'll be missing a couple days' memories."

It was downright impressive how quickly Hill took that in, regained her footing, nodded, and pointed her gun at Gamora, who was approaching with that spear.

Darcy left them to it, turning to face the other mind slaves as they approached. She decided that, seeing as how the complete reversion had worked the first time, it was still a better chance than trying to get in a good blow to the head. She wondered if she could manage across a distance.

She focused her energy on the red-haired girl, who looked like she was going for some equipment Darcy couldn't tell the function of. The girl stumbled, looking startled. Darcy went to her.

"Run," she told the girl. "Resort's totaled. Time to go."

"But resort security is my job," said the girl, and her sharp eyes took in as much of the situation as she could. "Rose Witch," she said in recognition. "I'm Peyton. What's the plan?" She took a taser from the jumble of equipment she'd been crouched over.

Darcy decided she liked Peyton.

But this was going to be a hell of a fight.

* * *

It was several minutes later that Thanos knocked Loki to the ground and turned to assess what had gone wrong between his mind slaves, but the sight that greeted the titan was one of dust settling. Gamora stood in the midst of a slaughter.

"Death," Thanos said, smiling. "I am sad to have missed it. But it still pleases me to see the aftermath. Rose Witch has fallen."

Loki surveyed the scene, and his shock was genuine. He had not believed his protege would fall so quickly, so brutally. But Darcy was realistic, a good assessor of her own strength, and when she said she was "crap at illusions," it was really quite true. Her primitive light shows usually could fool no one, and she certainly was not capable of producing a facsimile of the sight before him. Maria Hill, three of Stark's employees and another SHIELD agent, all with grievous wounds, all still as death. Blood pooled around Maria's head, dark and sinister. The red-haired tech was all but cleft in two. And Darcy... the gaping hole in her abdomen and the empty, glassy stare of her eyes... they burned into Loki's soul, making him fear that it was all going to go terribly wrong again, that nothing could save him from being the god who brought about chaos and destruction on all the realms, and now on this new, if barren, world.

Thanos grinned at the lost look on the little god's face. "So falls your only ally," the titan gloated. "Now we move on to you." He grasped Loki tightly by the shoulders and hauled him into the next room, and Loki barely gave token resistance, mind awhirl with failed plans and new factors and the terrible emotions that always came with such a failure. He was relieved to be spared more of that bloody sight.

* * *

Tony came flying back into the room through one of the larger bays, setting down the finished full-sized pressure chamber he'd somehow built or acquired in the less than 30 minutes he'd been gone. He shed his suit to work on the other necessary parts of the project, but it wasn't the spaceworthy one, anyway. He yelled at his bots, sending them off for various things, parts, the doorway at this end for reinstallation, and was just starting in on separating the newly-acquired arc pod from its remaining extraneous parts, when the displays lit up with another message from the moon.

Tony's eyes locked onto the pale, green-clad figure who stood by Thanos's side, restraints heavy around his wrists.

The message itself was short. "I have him," said Thanos, "and you have your time. Make use of it. Stand prepared for my next strike. Die like the heroes you call yourselves."

Loki said nothing, merely looking, hollow, sullen and defiant, in the direction of Thanos's shoulder. And there was no more time to watch him, because the transmission cut out.

Tony spent half a second blinking at the screen, then he set his face in a determined expression. "Okay, time to go. You get a number that works?" Tony asked, speeding through the process of making sure the self-building gate was up to spec and putting it inside the smaller vacuum chamber.

Peter smiled as the pressure lowered until he could dial without changing the trajectory of the satellite too much. "You are a lucky bastard, you know that, why would you even put a satellite in orbit of the primary lunar lagrange point? That can't be an easy orbit to maintain." The little single-function robot slotted itself through the three-inch hole and expanded into the starry emptiness beyond.

"Because I could, and because it's always served me well to do cool things when I realized I could." Tony spoke as his armor formed itself around him - the vacuum-ready suit still required specialized closing procedures, but the bots here in the workshop could get it done in pretty short order.

"It's definitely cool, it's frigging awesome is what it is. It'll still take half a day to reach lunar landing but you don't have the same time limit anymore I guess."

Tony turned a fierce glare on Peter. "No, this just got ten times more urgent. The sooner I get there the better, because who knows what that lunatic has in store for Loki this time? He still has the scars from their last little meetup." He closed his faceplate, turning towards the pressure lock. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have a boyfriend to rescue."

"Yeah," said Peter. "Of course. Go, bring Josh back safe, right?"

Tony didn't take the time to answer, but Peter thought the slight relaxation of the suit's shoulders meant he was forgiven.


	4. Passage of Time

**Chapter 4: Passage of Time**

Bruce focused in on his uninjured hand, curling it in on itself, then deliberately relaxing it. He searched his jumbled brain for a distraction, a puzzle. The problem he'd been working on, the equipment was down, the data was gone, that frustration wouldn't help him now. Numbers, usually so engaging, obliging and easy, skittered away from the pounding in his head. There was only the dark, the confusion, the pain... and Clint.

Clint settled in next to him, leaning against the same wall, close but not touching. The archer hissed only a little as he maneuvered his battered ankle into a not-too-painful position. At least gravity wasn't something he had to fight against too much to reposition himself. Blood and dust streaked his face and habitually bare arms, but it didn't detract from his appearance at all. He was nothing more exotic than an exceptionally talented human, and one with one-sixth his normal weight at that, but at this moment, Bruce got the impression that the man would weather a hurricane and not falter, once he'd settled into a spot like that.

Clint was an anchor point, and he was there offering anything Bruce needed to regain his footing.

Bruce curled his hand and relaxed it one more time, then he reached out and laid it across Clint's knee.

Clint didn't respond with any change in expression, just treated it like part of the landscape, a wind in the trees maybe, and put his own hand over Bruce's, rubbing at it with one thumb.

Bruce felt his breathing settle, felt everything become just a little bit easier to handle. He hadn't let himself experience this, the effects of human touch when he was so close to losing it. But Clint had been right - there was nowhere else to go. If Bruce had turned, Clint would most likely die, no matter how far he had managed to get.

Still, it might not be enough.

"Talk to me," he told Clint. "Anything, I'm not up to much complicated, apparently."

"Okay, all right," Clint said, voice still slightly raspy. "So I was shooting while you were working, and archery in this gravity? It's wild. Shots just don't have the same dropoff. When I first started up it was like the cartoon idea I had about shooting a bow before the first time I ever picked one up. You know? You think the arrow's gonna go where the arrow's pointing."

"Yeah, that would be my assumption," Bruce agreed.

"But it's actually so much more complicated than that. Even given perfect stance and release I always have to figure in gravity, and angle, and wind. Gravity's the one of those that I've never had to change how I think about, until today. It's just wild, seeing the arrows doing the thing that made sense before I knew how they actually worked. But then I started to get into it, and of course it's all the same factors at work, only..."

Clint rambled on, about the feel of archery and how much he loved it, some of his favorite foods and some of his disastrous attempts at cooking, other things that had happened since they started living in the tower.

"And oh, man, Doc, I don't know how I even _lived_ before your cooking. It's just crazy good. I mean, I'm not really a connoisseur of much outside of pizza, burgers and the best in cheap diner food, but the best in cheap diner food is pretty damn good and still no one holds a candle to your hash browns. They're pretty much the perfect food." Clint smiled smugly. "And the guy who serves them? Not bad looking either." He cleared his throat slightly. "No, really, though. I've never really had a home, you know, a place where people cooked for me, and just... I dunno. The tower's home, and I can't help thinking that a lot of that is you."

It really was calming, aside from the one issue that was becoming inevitably clearer to Bruce.

"You really want this to work, don't you?" Bruce asked eventually. "Us. I really don't see it happening anytime soon, and the only thing I've got left to try, the thing I've been working on to try and make things work better with me and the Hulk... Clint, it's basically magic. Not the kind of thing I'd put my faith in, especially if I were you."

"I don't know, it works for you, it works." Clint shrugged.

"Are you really going to trust something that... unproven, that mysterious? I wonder about it myself sometimes." Bruce wrinkled his eyebrows, looking at Clint.

"You mean because you can do some next-level bullshit with your superbrain that I have no hope of understanding?" Clint chuckled, shaking his head. "Believe me, that's nothing new."

Bruce smiled wryly, self-deprecatingly. "And I'm definitely not the world's greatest marksman. My brain's not built for that." His expression shifted to concern again. "But... I would understand if you're not the most comfortable around thought-manipulating magic, the kind that's natural to Loki's species."

Clint inhaled deeply and spit it out, breathily, the sound of a whole set of tensions being released, let go of at once.

"I wanna be part of the family," he said at last. "The thing you and Tony and Loki and Darcy have? I want in. I want in, more than I'm still worried about Loki."

"Are you still worried about Loki?" Bruce asked, the next logical question.

"More worried about what's out there that can turn people against each other," Clint said. "Thanos, that's the guy who masterminded the whole invasion, right? The thing is, there's a lotta people out there who might have something like that mind mojo Loki used on me. And if that's a danger again?" Clint squeezed Bruce's hand gently. "I'll actually feel a lot better knowing we've got a couple of people on the team who have some experience with the stuff. Who can maybe bring me back if I get turned again."

Bruce nodded gravely. "I can see that," he said. "I'm uncomfortable around things I can't understand. But I guess I am kind of used to being the expert in the room."

Clint chuckled. "You usually are."

They sat in silence for a minute longer, Bruce weighing various factors in the balance, finding he was as calm as he was going to get without more comfortable surroundings, and deciding it was time to go get cleaned up, bandage their injuries as best they could manage.

"I should clean us both up and check and treat injuries," he said. "First aid kit outside the bathroom. I'm hoping the bathroom sink still works. It's a completely independent system, so damage to the rest of the base shouldn't affect it."

Clint nodded agreement, then groaned as he tried to move his leg and found it worse than he remembered. "I'm feeling more charitable towards magic every moment," he grumbled. "Where are the damn sorcerers when you need them."

Bruce breathed a laugh as he stood, checking the extent of his own bruises. "I don't see any. Guess a regular M. D. will have to do."

Clint took his offered arm, and between them they managed to get Clint up onto his good leg without overbalancing. "Thought you weren't allowed to call yourself that," he said curiously.

"Well, not in the U.S.," Bruce answered, leading a careful path across the jumbled but still mostly-intact lab. "But as of yet, there is no medical board with jurisdiction on the lunar surface, and the medics upstairs have evacuated, so I'm the person most qualified on this planet to decide whether I'm a doctor."

Once they got to the bathroom, Bruce washed his own hands and face while Clint messed with his open phone. "Zero bars," the archer said.

"We're under tons of rock, and Jasper is down," Bruce replied. "Better turn it to airplane mode, save batteries." He took out his own phone and did the same before handing Clint a wet towel and opening up the first aid kit.

"No way of knowing what's going on upstairs, then, not without going up there," Clint said as he cleaned himself up, cringing as a cut on his arm started bleeding again. Bruce took the towel from him and started in with a fresh one, cleaning the worst of the cuts and starting to bandage them.

"We can't force open the hatches," Bruce informed him, not allowing for any argument. "Upstairs could just be vacuum now. If structural damage has gotten this far down, it's a miracle _we're_ not breathing vacuum."

"Okay," said Clint, willing to follow Bruce's lead if that was what kept the doctor calm. "So we wait?"

"We wait," agreed Bruce. "And we hope that someone contacts us before anything more life-threatening happens to us."

"So what do you wanna do in the meantime?" Clint asked. "I vote it's your turn to talk. Haven't heard anywhere near enough out of you."

"About what?" Bruce asked.

"I hear talking's a pretty standard way to get to know people," Clint said with a tiny smirk. "Heard all about Steve's mom, Peter's aunt and uncle, Darcy's folks, and the royal asses up in Asgard. Heard some of the Howard stories, even Sif's parents-stuff. When it comes to Nat, I guess I know as much as anyone does about the who and why. But you?" Clint's fingers drummed a silent rhythm against his bow case as he looked at Bruce. "I know why I don't talk about my past. Rather just leave it behind, honestly. But, I don't know. The guy you are, there had to have been something good somewhere in there."

Bruce laughed dryly, painfully. "There's a lot I'd like to leave buried; unfortunately that's not how it works. The mess always finds its way out some way or another." Bruce looked at his hand, curling and uncurling a fist, as if it were one of Tony's machines, being analyzed and tested and maintained. "But yeah, there were a few good things."

"Tell me." Clint said it like it was nothing, like he was just curious, making conversation. Clint kept him calm, kept him from worrying about their predicament. It was nice, having him calm and easy being around the potential rage monster. Bruce wondered when that had changed.

"When I was eight, I moved in with my aunt and uncle, and my cousin Jen. She's pretty much the closest thing I have to a sister; God, I haven't seen her in years, though. What was it, Christmas '98, Betty and I went out to visit them in California? Before the Incident, anyway."

Clint recognized the way he talked around things, the signs of well-worn paths to skirt treacherous subjects, remembering only what he had come back to get. Clint wasn't going to ask why he had moved, what had happened to his parents. That wouldn't come out, not today, not here. This was about the good things.

"I guess I could call her up, see how she's doing. We were each other's cheerleaders, you know? In school and in... everything. I talked her into law school, could see she had the brains for it. And she's the reason I applied to Harvard." Bruce smiled, and Clint thought it was probably the least bitter expression Clint had ever seen on the doctor's face.

The doctor cleaned up the bandage wrappers and other debris, and they sat on the bathroom floor together, the hardness of the tile no bother at 1/6 the usual pressure. He set about taking off Clint's boot and examining the offending ankle, and now it was his turn to get Clint thinking, keep him distracted.

"What about you?" Bruce asked. "Anything good, could be something that happened last week that I didn't know about."

"Well, Hulk smiled at me the one time, that was cool."

Bruce giggled a bit helplessly. "Uh, that's great, I guess. But not much of a story."

"Okay, well..." Clint thought. "I guess you should know about this, if we're gonna date. You remember Agent Coulson? Woulda seen him on the Helicarrier, I guess, while I was out of it."

"Yeah." Bruce nodded, recognizing that this was a subject that required patience. Clint wasn't used to talking about it, not like Bruce's well-worn pebbles of happiness from his childhood.

"He was... really important to me. I was pretty much of a screw-up, before he recruited me for SHIELD. He was the first person who ever thought I could be something, you know? Something besides a circus freak or a gun for hire. He always looked at me like I was worth looking at, right from the beginning."

Bruce was already touching Clint, had just finished wrapping his ankle up again, but this was a more intimate conversation, so it just seemed right in that moment to reach out and take Clint's hand, run his thumb over the back in a soothing motion. Clint relaxed a little bit, slumped against the wall.

"And you remember I said it takes a lot for me to trust someone? Gotta be on a team with them? There's one reason I know that, that's Coulson an' me an' Natasha. We were a team for a long time; that was my life, okay? There was no one before that who... anyway," Clint interrupted himself with a determined change in tone. "Phil... I loved him. Dunno if he felt the same; never asked. Didn't really get that far. Whether we were together was never a big deal for me, you know? As long as we were close. As long as we had each other's backs. So many missions in so many places; only reason I never had a place before that was home. He was it."

Bruce took a big breath, settling himself before he replied to that.

"I don't think there's any way I can compete with that," Bruce said finally, stroking Clint's hand again. "But I'd like to try to give you back at least some of the things he brought to your life. Whatever I can."

"Damn." Clint's voice had the beginnings of humor in it. "I don't want any pity dates. I meant to be all suave and impressive and cool and sweep you off your feet and I kinda blew it." His smile and breath of a laugh told Bruce he didn't actually mind that this had happened instead.

"I don't think that would have actually _worked_ on me," Bruce replied.

"Are you kidding? Tony king of cool has you wrapped around his little finger, I know if he weren't taken you'd be all over that."

Bruce snorted dirisively. "You... oh God. Do you really think that?"

"Doc, you spend more time down in the labs than Loki does. Gotta be a reason."

"I like work." Bruce laughed, thinking about it. "No. We'd be a complete no-go if we ever tried to do the 'emotions' thing. He can't handle feeling things for more than two minutes at a time, and then there's me, always processing something. He has to tune that out for his own sanity. I'd need someone with at least a _little_ more patience than that."

Clint gave a little satisfied sigh and squeezed the hand of Bruce's that was wrapped around his. "Patience," he said, "I got."

They sat in contented silence for a couple of minutes before a screen lit up beside them, above their heads by the bathroom door, the kind of sixteen bit bios startup screen that Bruce recognized from years of seeing similar, but none quite like this. Just Another System Perfectly Embodying Reason, it blinked.

Bruce smiled at it. "I'd say patience is serving you pretty well," he said.

* * *

Darcy panted, seeing the chaos around her. Things were not going well. Hill was down. The red-haired tech - Peyton - was running away, but Gamora caught up to her and sliced into her with that nasty spear.

Everyone was dying, and it was Darcy's job to save them. But just going and healing these people wasn't gonna cut it right now. She needed not to die in the process. She needed time. She needed space. She needed the evil magician and his sidekick the hell out of her hair. But those were things that would be hard to get.

Her mind raced. Peyton was dying now. Darcy knew it was all about time. Let time pass or turn it back. But once a person was dead, that was it, sayonara, no more to be done. Loki had made that very clear. But if she could turn back time for a person, maybe she could also hold it still?

Peyton, she thought, focused, reached out and _held_ in her mind, stopped time for the girl with sheer force of will, brain and all, and it took a lot, but, Darcy thought, she'd succeeded.

The trick cost her a moment's attention, and she took a spear to her gut from Gamora. She gasped.

She needed to live. She needed to live, to save Peyton, Maria and the others. She shoved Gamora away, ignoring the pain, and then, slowly and ungracefully, collapsed to her hands and knees.

Her arm brushed the golden chain trailing from her pocket. Energy, power, to do whatever she wished, whatever she could will into being. She reached with her mind towards Agent Hill, who was still shivering slightly, but otherwise unmoving, and stopped time for her as well.

Then she could no longer hold herself up, and slumped sideways, making sure to keep her hand in contact with the slim golden chain. She drew on its power, and then, very carefully, stopped time for her body, but not her mind. She needed to leave herself an out.

Suddenly she couldn't see, she couldn't feel; all she experienced was the ticking passage of time, and that slight tingling awareness that was all she experienced of magic. She and the living pulse of the reactor were alone in her head.

She didn't know when it would be safe to move, to heal herself and the others and get them all somewhere safe. So she waited, and hoped, and tried to make sense of the tiny tingling signs of the other magic in the room, the staff and Thanos and Loki.

She kind of hoped she wasn't really as blind as Hel kept saying she was.


	5. Calculation of Odds

**Chapter 5: Calculation of Odds**

Tony popped out into the empty space of L1 lagrange, and the moon was huge through the mask of the suit. As much time as he'd spent on the moon, and designing equipment for vacuum, the last time he'd actually been in space was the other side of that portal.

The bomb, the Chitauri, the knowledge he was going to die, Loki -

Loki. He was here because of Loki. His Loki.

"Jarvis, we all charged up and ready for this trip? Got your bearings?"

"Yes, Sir," said the AI in his ears, and it was ridiculously reassuring to hear that voice, to know that he wasn't actually thousands of miles from the nearest other thinking being. A line appeared in the HUD, oriented to that spot on the moon where he knew his newest vacation home was located.

"Well then, let's get this done," Tony said, orienting the suit to his goal and pushing flight power as high as it would go.

After five hours of somehow both stultifyingly boring and agonizingly nerve-wracking flight, Jarvis interrupted again. "Sir," he said, "we must slow for approach."

"Still got a ways to go," Tony argued.

"Sir. Our velocity has been steadily increasing. You will be no help to Mr. Albastru if the impact of landing breaches the integrity of the suit."

"Yeah, yeah," was Tony's reply, and he shut down main flight power and used the repulsors to reorient himself, pointing his feet down at the base, which he could now just barely see under him, a black speck against the pale regolith. "How close d'you think we can cut it? Another two hours? Two and a half?"

"Closer to four, if you wish your bones to remain intact, as well. Unlike an Earth landing, deploying flaps will do nothing to slow our descent."

"Gotta say, I'm giving the alternative some thought. I could run the suit with two broken legs, right?"

"Sir."

"Right, four hours it is," Tony agreed, turning flight power on full in the wrong direction and hating it with every fiber of his being.

* * *

The absence of breathing and heartbeat and all those other signs of life would have been much more disconcerting, before Helheim.

The lack of any report at all from her ordinary five senses was pretty distressing on its own merits, though.

Darcy stretched her magical perception as far and as finely as she could, trying to grasp those clouds of buzzing, of tingling, of _something_ that was the fabric of magic, that Loki and Thanos and the scepter all had intertwined in them. That the arc reactor she had in her pocket had wrapped tight in its core.

Except there was no context for distance, no way to tell any of it apart, and she really didn't think she could make much sense of it. And maybe she should just assume they'd all left and come back and heal herself, but she was determined to wait as long as she could stand, just in case, and while that was going on, she might as well try and figure this out.

She was pretty sure that her immediate surroundings had been vacated, had no magic in them but hers and the arc's.

There was a new tingle, and it felt far away, and it felt like the scepter-energy chasing across her skin before the arc-energy caught it and ate it and tucked it away.

They were using the scepter for something. Probably. Maybe.

In any case, that curiosity made the waiting unbearable, and Darcy snapped her body back to its standard state, healthy, lovely, and with a slight crick in her back. She stayed still, looked around, and saw no one - no one but the torn up people on the floor around her.

She was tired, but the arc reactor Loki had slipped her still had plenty in it, so she reverted Agent Hill again, and then went to fix Peyton while Maria checked on the others.

"Rose Witch, here, he's unconscious but there's a pulse."

Darcy waited only long enough to see Peyton stirring, and went to fix the other dude. Hill was bent over another figure when Darcy looked her way, but this time she just shook her head.

Peyton knew all the nooks and crannies of the resort, knew the security systems and overrides like the back of her hand. So when she led them through half-ruined hallways and blank metal doors and into a back room full of silent, still electronics, and the red-haired girl started to fiddle, Darcy was pretty sure they were in the right place.

* * *

Thanos spent the first while gleefully reminding Loki what he'd done to him the first time they'd met, all the threats he'd made. Gamora and Korath looked on, awaiting their parts in the plan. Loki didn't react as Thanos might have wanted, still stuck in the loops of wondering whether it was necessary to sacrifice Darcy to this plan, whether he could have done better, saved her the fear and pain of all that had happened. But there was still more he needed to do, more he needed to know, and if he did not let this pain overwhelm him, he could, perhaps, use it. Korath's presence here was interesting, and Loki had an idea where it might lead, where it could be made to lead.

He pushed Thanos for more. "You were never so interested in me before. I was just a tool. What have I done?"

Thanos smiled as his target showed signs of life. "You, little god? Why, only this. Before, you were a prince, a warrior, but only ever working to your own benefit. You were never a hero, not like you have become now. And I do so love the deaths of heroes. No, before you were a tool to bring me the Avengers. Now you are an Avenger, and a lovely trophy in your own right."

"Ah, and what do you know of the changes I've gone through? I, myself, think I am not so different from what I was."

"Perhaps not," said Thanos. "But then, I know more than most about the disgrace you were left in when you fell from Asgard. You were no hero then, and now, now you are Midnight Mystery. Now you have an image to destroy. Now Earth will cry over your loss."

"Will they?" Loki showed a bit of confidence, more sure now that Thanos's knowledge of his life before the fall was somewhat lacking. Good.

"You will fall, and they will mourn their defender. I am more than certain. I live every day to see your dead body before me again. But first I'll break you. I did it before and I can do it again."

"You did not," said Loki. "I won that exchange, I think. Your army, decimated. Earth's heroes, victorious. But I play broken very well, do I not? How will you know whether I have truly fallen before your onslaught?"

Thanos laughed, deep and menacing. "I have learned," he said. "And I have prepared. Your mind may be twisted and wild, but I think we will find some way to tame it, my new ally and I." He gestured to the Kree beside him. "He's very good with psionic technology."

Loki visibly swallowed.

Korath of the Kree was a geneticist, a genius of technology and of imbuing beings with powers not native to their species. He'd given himself some small psionic gifts along the way, and when Loki thought about what he might do, given access to the scepter, or even the Tesseract... well, Loki was going to have to be very careful about this.

"You could never force your way in," he dared.

"I could not," Thanos said, "before now. Korath, give me the enhancements."

Korath bent with a syringe to Thanos's arm, injecting him with whatever technomedical marvel the Kree had come up with to enhance Thanos's telepathy. Once that was done, Thanos moved and stretched, feeling the concoction spread through his veins.

Then the titan grinned.

"Let us see whose mind now has mastery over the other's," he said.

"It is not a question of mastery." Loki's eyes darted about, looking for options, churning up his mind and flirting with panic. This was not an experience he was looking forward to. "Nor of power. But then you never did quite grasp that, that what you bring to a mind is what you get out of it. And all you ever bring is defiance and destruction."

"You think you know better than I do how to break into a mind? You are no telepath, have no focus or discipline."

"Perhaps not, but I know _my_ mind." He laid a thin veneer of cocky confidence over his mounting fear. "And you will not break me."

Thanos shook his head, and approached the chained god, reaching for his mind, and Loki drew back, cringing, as their minds met in a spark, crackle, crash of colliding consciousnesses, harsh and destructive and agonizing.

Loki gasped, but Thanos screamed, holding great purple hands to his head. His eyes widened at Loki. "How do you live in that?" He grimaced in pain.

"Not pleasantly," Loki replied.

"Korath!" the titan yelled.

"Yes, Titan," the blue-skinned and currently blue-eyed warrior/scientist answered, watching Thanos as he turned.

"We need a new approach."

* * *

"Contact with Jasper has been reestablished," Jarvis told Tony. "Confirmed alive and safe are Bruce Banner, Clint Barton, Peyton Hardwick and Sean Winters, as well as Maria Hill and Darcy Lewis. Several others from the list of those previously unaccounted for are confirmed to be in Thanos's custody."

"Huh. Darcy's here?" Tony asked, but truly his mind barely brushed that before moving on to its other reactions. Bruce and Clint, safe. Loki, not. "What's up with Josh?"

"Based on available information, Jasper surmises that Thanos and one of his current acquisitions are building a machine designed to view and interpret the contents of Loki's mind. It is not yet complete, but it may soon be so."

"Not good, not good," said Tony. "ETA for my landing?"

"Twenty minutes," Jarvis replied. "The contingent currently in security room 2 have been attempting to delay the manufacture of the machine without revealing their presence; however, Thanos has grown suspicious and is now searching for them. They have ceased their attempts in favor of concealment. Fortunately, none of Thanos's current minions have the knowledge of base security that Miss Hardwick does."

"Yeah, she's a fireball," Tony said approvingly. "Give me everyone's positions and a list of what's up and running and what isn't. Let's make a plan."


	6. Loss of Volition

**Chapter 6: Loss of Volition**

Bruce and Clint were making their painstaking way up through the elevator shaft, mulling over what they'd learned from Jasper about the situation upstairs.

"Maybe we should have stayed where we were," Bruce said, frowning down at the bottom of the shaft, not too far away quite yet.

"Come on, Doc, we're Avengers," Clint answered him from above. "This is what they pay us for. Fighting aliens and threats to Earth civilization."

"Actually they pay me to do science and keep Tony and Josh out of trouble," Bruce joked.

Clint looked down and answered that more seriously than he might have. "So consider this part of your 'keeping Josh out of trouble' clause," he said.

Bruce sighed as he pulled himself up three more rungs of the ladder all at once before latching onto it again. "You're right," he said. "Now that I know Loki's up there and in trouble, I need to do what I can for him. He's family. And I'll just pray I don't kill everyone else still up there in the process." He watched Clint's efficient movements, arm strength more than compensating for his injury in the low gravity. "What about you? We know the staff Loki used is still in play. Are you sure you're willing to risk experiencing its effects again?"

Clint answered with a sound halfway between a cough and a laugh. "I let that thing change my decisions, stop me from fighting on the right side, it's already as good as got me," he said. "Thanks, Doc, but I'll deal with this my way."

Bruce was in awe of Clint, the way he refused to bow to his fear, and lived with such earnest, direct intention.

"I wish the world looked that simple to me," was what he said, and then he shook his head. "That didn't sound right. Not what I meant. You've got... this confidence in your decisions that I envy. I've spent a lot of time trying to come to terms with all the things that have happened because I wasn't in control of myself. And you just... you get up again, and you keep going. I could use more of that in my life." Bruce looked up at Clint thoughtfully, who had stopped climbing to listen to him. "More of you."

"God, Bruce," Clint said, looking up and away, the roughness in his voice a little more prominent now, and there was a breath of laughter to his voice. "You gotta say stuff like that now, huh? I'm kinda in the middle of something right now, don't distract me."

Bruce smiled at that as they continued up the elevator shaft.

* * *

In security room 2, the impromptu team were laying low, waiting for a new opportunity, and Peyton was fiddling with the computers, trying to get more of the network back up, when Jasper made contact.

"My connection to the resort security network has been reestablished," he said. "Thank you, Peyton."

"Jazz, you're OK!" she said, breaking into a grin. "I thought you were toast!"

"My primary core has been destroyed," he said. "My secondary core, in the deep lab, has recently rebooted. But I am, indeed, intact, and glad to be so."

"Hey, J2," said Darcy. "Anybody still down there in need of rescue or anything?"

"Doctor Banner and Agent Barton are making their way up under their own power," the AI answered. "I will let you know if they require assistance. Also, Iron Man is approaching the base from above and wishes to collaborate on a plan to free Loki from his current predicament."

Darcy's heart leapt. "Tony's here?" she said. "Things are looking up."

"You sure about that?" Agent Hill asked with a skeptical tone, but a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth and gave her away.

"Shush," said Darcy. "Let's make a plan."

* * *

The machine that Korath was constructing took shape slowly but with ominous precision; clearly, this was no clumsy exploration of possibilities, like Tony's experiments tended to be. This was tech Korath knew well, and Loki assumed that it had not existed before because the gem that had been cradled in the scepter now had a prominent and presumably essential position in the machine.

A great screen sat above it where it lay in its nest of wires and circuits, and Loki wondered how it would display, what version of reality it might show.

Thanos loomed above Loki, in better spirits now that the machine was almost ready, and soon he could continue taking Loki apart.

"You really want to force me to use this?" Thanos said, gesturing at the construction. "It will not be as... yielding... as a sentient mind."

"You will never find what you're looking for," Loki spat back at him. But he shivered, just a little, at the thought of what the machine might feel like as it probed his mind.

"Ah, is there something I should be looking for?" Thanos asked with a widening smile. "I simply want to break you open and see what is at your core. The secrets you protect so fiercely. I wish to know what this hero fights for so that I can know what it is that I destroy. I want to punish you for failing in the task for which I sent you to Earth by depriving you of whatever it is you most value. But there is some secret, something beyond what I already know, that you wish to protect?" Thanos laughed darkly. "Then I will find that."

Loki trembled with fear and horror - an inevitable state, he knew, if the plan were to work as it must. Thanos was following his lead nicely. It was a terrifying prospect.

"It is ready," Korath told Thanos. And Thanos dragged Loki by his chains to stand beside it. Loki resisted, twisting and pulling against the restraints.

But then something exploded, and the machine lost power. Korath and Thanos both turned to look in the direction of the loud concussion that was still shaking the base.

"I told Gamora to find and destroy them, permanently this time," Thanos growled. "She disappoints me too much today. Korath, find what they have done and fix it."

And Tony was at Loki's side, taking a cutting laser to those chains, the field of the ever-present arc reactor in his chest disrupting their magic just enough for them to give way.

For that moment, Loki felt only anger.

"You cannot be here, you _should not_ be here," Loki hissed at Iron Man.

"Well I'm here, and you're free, let's book it," said the infuriating human, attempting to drag him bodily away from the machine and Thanos.

"I had this well in hand, mortal," Loki snarled at him, removing himself from the metallic grip. Thanos had turned to watch them.

"What the hell, Jo-"

"DO NOT PRESUME to order me about! You are in my way!" Loki threw Iron Man across the room, and when he just got up and started towards them again, Loki reached for his magic and the armor disappeared. Tony was left without defense, in the presence of the most dangerous enemy he'd ever faced.

Loki did not let himself slip from the momentum of the plan, directed all his anger and intent in Thanos's direction. "You've left yourself far too open," he told the titan. "Perception is a two-way street, and you do not know your new powers as you should."

His mind reached out and forced its way into Thanos's enhanced perceptions, and Thanos gasped in surprise, then gritted his teeth. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"The little hero forced my hand," he said. "I will show you what I mean when I speak of finding what you bring." He slid closer to Thanos, prying open the Titan's mind. "When I invade a mind I bring CHAOS," he hissed, "and chaos is what I reap. Chaos is what I AM."

Thanos cried out.

* * *

Tony sat, shaking, on the broken floor of his moon resort. No armor, no Jarvis, no Josh, apparently. That had been all Loki, all the flashing green eyes he'd seen before he was thrown out of his tower. Before the portal, before the bomb, before that achingly empty space on the other side.

And the safeties were out, here, the structural integrity couldn't be all that great anymore, and Tony Stark was very close to being in such a terrible void once again.

Tony forced himself to push against the floor, moving away bit by bit from the clash of alien sorcerers where an unarmed, unprotected human had no business. He was shaking too hard to stand up, breathing too erratically to make sense of his thoughts.

Loki had pushed him away, left him alone.

He made his way into an adjacent hallway and just curled up and tried to breathe.

After a while he heard a familiar female voice calling quietly, "Tony?"

Darcy was there, crouched awkwardly near him but looking like she was unsure if she should come closer. Tony couldn't make his breath settle enough to answer her.

"C'm'on, Tony," she said, holding out a hand. "We've gotta get you safe."

Tony shook his head in a general denial. _No such thing as safe._

Darcy's reply was to take something out of her pocket. A glowing object on a golden chain, the sorcerously open arc reactor Loki usually kept. In her hands, it had an oddly pinkish hue.

"Josh lent me this, told me to take care of it," she said. She looked pointedly at him, but slightly worried, and held out her offered hand again, more emphatically.

He watched its soft glow for a minute. He took a more steady breath. "Right, okay," he answered, and took her hand and stood, ready to follow her to wherever they needed to go.

* * *

Thanos hardened his mental defenses, pushed Loki out. The two of them turned once more to physical battle, striking and casting energy and trying to regain dominance. They were both tiring when Gamora and the remaining slaves returned, joining to bring Loki to heel again with two or three efficient blows from behind.

"Perhaps you did not have the situation so well in hand as you had imagined," Thanos laughed, dragging him once more to the machine, which had regained power. "Perhaps you should have accepted the mortal's help. I have been a telepath for millennia and you think I cannot defend myself against you?"

Loki was panting in fear and exhaustion, appearing as if the fight was nearly drained out of him.

"You cannot fool me, you have been a hero. You do not lose my interest by turning on your companions in the last hour. It simply makes the victory that much sweeter."

The machine returned to life, the screen lighting up, and Thanos forced Loki's hand over the glowing blue stone at its center.

The chaos and turmoil appeared in the form of a vicious storm, wind whipping and slashing, water and ice falling hard. It looked very familiar to Loki, though he had never seen the exact image before. The changes and twists sang in unison with his own conflicting and destructive thoughts.

Thanos's free hand danced over a control pad, and Loki felt the machine begin its work.

The machine was like a cold steel knife in his mind, cutting through all the layers, never yielding itself to the touch of thoughts, however violently Loki's mind defended itself.

And he could feel it like a blade sliding towards his heart, to cut out of him the thing he held most precious, the thing he protected most viciously.

* * *

Tony entered the security room to a chorus of welcomes, brilliant little Peyton and frighteningly competent Agent Hill and wide-smiling hotel desk guy, Sean, Jarvis had said? But most welcoming were the voices of J1 and J2, and the sight of his suit, safe and sound and waiting for him.

He should have known. He should have trusted. But now he knew, and that was good enough.

"J's," he said. "Show me what's happening."

There were a couple of camera feeds available out of the dozens that had once watched this section of the atrium, and one had a relevant view. Jasper brought it up on one of the screens.

But having eyes on what was happening between Thanos and Loki was not reassuring at all.

* * *

The machine seemed to be filtering psionic output, so that Thanos knew the answers to questions he asked, but everything else only appeared in the rather vague context of the images on the screen.

Loki fought the machine because he had to; he fought even though it hurt him because he needed Thanos to believe, and so Loki needed to believe; he fought because it was truly his instinct to protect what he had tucked away in the heart of this furious storm.

Loki sobbed as the machine's psionic blade cut deeper, and Thanos looked at the screen, where a familiar face was coming into focus - a small, childlike face.

"Ah, a daughter." Thanos grinned cruelly, and, inevitably, dug deeper into the vulnerability.

"No!" Loki managed, trying to twist his hand free, trying still to shut Thanos out.

"She is sick and there is no cure. She is incredibly delicate and you could not bear if anything happened to her. She is the most important thing to you. But somehow you still think of her as untouchable. Alone, in safekeeping. But there is no place I cannot find. You should know that by now."

Loki beat at Thanos's arm with his other hand, the force he could muster nothing more than futile.

"She waits in Niflheim." Thanos's self-satisfaction spread across his face like a cat with thick cream. "You will wait here for me while I go and see to her, will you not?" he said as he worked the controls further, and Loki felt his mind twist in on itself, trapping him with the power of his own mental storm, creating a nigh-impenetrable shield around Loki, the machine, and the gem. "The harder you fight, the tighter it will hold, because I have set you to fight yourself."

Of course, Loki still fought. And it hurt.

But Thanos left, knowing exactly as much as Loki wanted him to know.

* * *

Thanos arrived on Niflheim to find a simple circle of eight foot walls was all that protected the precious girl from intruders, besides the bleak weather of this place outside the protective border. She stood just inside the gates, examining and rearranging a wall of books like they were building blocks, the poor thing's only toys. The girl looked up at the noise of his arrival, and fear entered her eyes when she caught sight of his smug grin. She cowered, pressing herself against the precarious structure of books. He laughed, and stepped through the gate.

The girl before him straightened immediately, and slowly, menacingly, she began to smile.

"You're not terribly informed about Asgardian ghost stories of the last thousand years, are you, Titan?" she asked.

It was about then that Thanos realized he could, again, no longer draw on his magic.


	7. Proof of Concept

**Chapter 7: Proof of Concept**

Tony had been watching with a white-knuckled grip on the edge of a desk, but when Thanos disappeared, he crowed with triumph, knowing what Loki had just set him up for. But they couldn't celebrate just yet. The machine still had Loki trapped, and Gamora and Korath and the two other mindslaves that were still under the gem's command stood around it, waiting for their master's return (which was just never gonna happen, Tony thought gleefully).

It was soon after that that Jasper notified them of the approach of Clint and Bruce, and Peyton happily let them in. It was good to have more of the team. Tony started in.

"So Loki managed to pull one over on Thanos alone, but now he's caught in that trap. The way Thanos explained it, seems impossible to escape, but I refuse to believe we can't find some way around it. But first we need to get those others out of the way, Loki probably knows more about how the trap works than the rest of us put together, regardless of how much any of us might know about magic, radiation or engineering." The billionaire looked extremely annoyed at having to admit that. Darcy was just thrilled that one of her specialties was included in the 'genius' lineup. Even if it wasn't the one she really _knew._

"So how do we do this?" Clint asked. "I mean, we've got four Avengers, the badass deputy director of SHIELD, and a couple of local guides, so we could just go with the usual frontal assault. We do that, we could use a hulk." He shot a look at Bruce.

"I'm not comfortable with that," Bruce said. "He doesn't understand how vulnerable this place is, how he can't just smash the windows like he usually does."

"So I'll explain it to him," Clint said, beautifully matter-of-fact about it.

Bruce shook his head. "My coming up here is one thing. If I can do something to help Loki get free of that thing, that's great. But that's enough of a risk without letting Hulk come out to fight in a pressure vessel that's already taken so much structural damage."

Tony watched the two of them, interested. "I'm on board with having Big Green on our side for this one," he said. "The sooner we can get Loki free, the better."

Bruce looked at his lab buddy, slightly wide-eyed. "It's not a good plan," he said. "I'd say that you agreeing with it is unsurprising, but it's worse than even most of yours."

"No, he's right," said Darcy. "Hulk's not a bad guy. When he helps me with rescue operations, he gets that sometimes he needs to be careful."

He glanced to Hill, and she only nodded agreement.

Bruce was at a loss. "I, uh..." He looked at his hands, too taken aback to know how to continue.

Clint put hands on his shoulders, drawing the scientist's eyes up to his. "Hulk's my teammate. I trust him. You get what that means to me by now? A lot, okay? Give him a chance."

Bruce felt tears begin in his eyes, which was just not working for him with so many people around, and Clint steered him into a corner, shielding him from the others, so that Bruce could imagine it was just the two of them, and the Hulk. Bruce rubbed at his eyes, and considered the choices that were before him. The hope and trust that everyone here was placing in him.

"I'm going to try to have a chat with Hulk myself," he said. "Just... stay here, all right?"

Clint smiled. "Not goin' anywhere, Doc," he reassured. His hand squeezed lightly where it still rested against Bruce's shoulder.

Bruce let out a long breath. "Good."

He turned his thoughts inward, thinking of all that Hel had shown him about magic of the mind, all the exercises he'd done to try to open this path, rebuild the bridge between himself and the Hulk. He relaxed and reached out, hesitant and cautious, open to whatever might be there instead of anticipating relentless fury as he might have before.

Worry was there, restlessness and anticipation. Curiosity and annoyance. There was an acknowledgement, and then what amounted to a "Why?"

Bruce took a moment to adjust before trying to replicate that wordless communication, so much feeling and little thought, that somehow still contained such large concepts.

Instead of verbal communication, Bruce tried spatial, picturing where they were, the structure of the moonbase, its quintessential smashability, the emptiness around it, and how, if it were broken, everything would fly out violently and there would be no more breathing for anybody.

Hulk, immediately and simply, acknowledged this, and waited for more.

Bruce was startled by that more than he could have said, but he called himself back to task, conveying the fact of an impending battle.

Hulk was hesitant now, not sure what he was meant to be doing with that. There was a shade of frustration that Bruce might be telling him only to forbid him from fighting.

Bruce tried his best to pass on the warmth he'd felt from the team for Hulk, from Tony, of course, from Clint, somewhat expected, and from the pragmatic Darcy and the quintessentially military Hill. The real shock.

Hulk was as confused and touched as Bruce had been, but in a way that was distinctly... louder. And more vindicated. It rushed through Bruce, that feeling, as if Hulk had yelled aloud, and Bruce shivered, fighting to keep open, not shut himself down to protect his calm from that mighty roar.

But Hulk settled, and anxiously, he awaited the word of his alter ego. It was good to be wanted by them, but...

"_I_ want you to come out too," Bruce said, and he did his very best to mean it. "I'll give over once we're out in the atrium."

Hulk laughed, relieved and joyous. Yes, there was something about being trusted that felt about like that.

Bruce laughed back, and he opened his eyes again, and there was Clint, watching him, curious and thoughtful, smiling gentle and slightly wry.

"I gave him the message," Bruce said, and he didn't realize for another moment that he was shaking slightly, not until Clint wrapped a steady, strong hand around both of his where they were clasped in front of him. Bruce let his forehead drop onto that steady point, breathing, recovering himself.

"He up to joining the party?" Clint asked quietly.

"He's just waiting for his cue," Bruce said, and it was kind of meant to sound casual but it actually held wonder and incredulity and breathlessness.

Clint wrapped warm arms around Bruce, and that was good, because everything felt topsy turvy, even the gravity wasn't normal at all, and he needed something solid to hang on to.

After a minute, Bruce raised his head again to look at the rest of the room. Tony was looking curiously in their direction and whispering to Darcy, who swatted him for it, but everyone else was politely busy or pretending to be. Bruce was pretty okay with that, on the whole.

The group came together and they made a plan. Peyton had been watching surveillance and she and the J's had noticed that Korath and Gamora were increasingly tense, both with each other and the fact that Thanos had not yet returned. Korath wanted to dig into Loki's head himself, see what he could wrest out of the machine that might explain Thanos's absence. Gamora disagreed, knowing how much Thanos was territorial about the heroes upon whom he wanted particular vengeance.

Hulk would be held back for last - they wanted to rescue the two remaining humans slaved to the staff, if they could. Hawkeye and Iron Man would serve as distractions while Darcy did her magic thing on them.

It worked quite well. Clint fired a sonic arrow through from one section of the atrium, past where the machine and its guards were, and through another doorway. Gamora sent one of the minions to go see what the noise was and stop it, and Darcy was there lying in wait and brought them back to their senses.

The second was trickier, as Gamora was more wary and tried to send Korath after Iron Man when he appeared, but Korath seemed to be shaking off the effects of the staff and defying her more every minute. Tony made an executive decision that it was time to begin the attack, press the advantage given by that distraction. Bruce saw him going into combat, being shot at with the staff by Gamora, and he let out a breath, and let go.

The Hulk changed the face of the whole battle, snatching up Gamora while she was focused on defending herself against Tony, and, conscious of the precarious structure around them, very deliberately squeezed her until she stopped breathing, and then dropped her to the floor.

Korath, who, between his limited psionic abilities and the fact that no one was weilding the staff now, had regained a certain amount of initiative, ran.

Iron Man shot him down in fairly short order, and Rose Witch got to the last slave, ducking a punch before magicking her back to her senses.

The Hulk watched in satisfaction as Hawkeye climbed down from his perch and tied up the two villains securely. Korath was bleeding quite a bit, but no one really cared to do anything about it. Rose Witch was with the two human slaves who were recovering, and Tony had rushed to Loki, opening his faceplate and examining the machine and its ominous halo of energy.

Tony Stark looked at the alien machinery. He'd never gotten a chance to study the scepter, and Loki could never explain the mechanics of it to Tony's satisfaction. And the circuitry that Korath had built up around it made no sense, used parts that Tony didn't know the materials or functions of, and he was forced to surmise that they'd come, along with Gamora, from one of Thanos's ships. And he couldn't even get to them, anyway, because of the energy field.

It was all extremely daunting, and Loki was there, eyes closed and struggling against the machine, the lines of pain only growing worse every time he tried to pull away.

Tony reached for Loki, needing just to communicate his presence and reassure that he was working on the problem. The moment his metal-clad fingers touched the pale skin of Loki's free hand, his eyes flew open, wide and frenzied.

"Hey, hey, just hang on, OK, Lokes? I'm gonna try and get you free from this thing."

Loki focused on Tony, seeing him at last, and he breathed a great breath, and his skin melted to blue, and the energy field dimmed. Loki slouched against the metal suit worryingly.

"Get me out of here, Tony," he rasped.

Tony carefully wrapped metal clad arms around the frost giant. "I'm sorry, I don't know how."

"I have done what can be done. All you need do... is pull."

"You sure?" Tony asked, remembering how painful it had looked before when Loki tried to pull away.

"Yes." And Loki only drifted passively in Iron Man's arms.

Tony figured that if he was gonna do this, it was probably a bandaid situation. So he braced himself, gripping Loki securely, and then launched himself across the room.

It worked, Loki was free, if breathing hard. And Tony wanted to kiss Loki, but everything he'd seen that day made him hesitant. He just held the god, as they drifted back towards the floor.

They watched as Hawkeye and the Hulk played like toddlers, jumping and spinning in the low gravity, a look of wonder and unparalleled joy on the huge green face, and Clint grinning madly one minute, and the next, face filled with tender yearning.

It was right, Tony decided. If this was what it took to get Hulk on the moon, he'd have a hard time regretting it. Now that he had Loki back.

Darcy approached the pair then, greeting Loki loudly and happily. Loki turned towards her, looking as if he wasn't quite sure of what he was seeing.

"You live, then," he said, pulling away from Tony.

"Yep, and I invented a _really_ useful new spell," she said. "Think it could be useful for Hel at some point. But anyway, yeah. I kept this safe for you." She held out the arc reactor on its golden chain, and as it passed from cream hand to blue, its glow turned from pink to green.

"Thank you," Loki said, and embraced her.

Darcy was only startled for a moment, and then she broke into a grin, hugging back.

He pulled away again. "But speaking of Hel," he said, "I believe she has a new prisoner that I need to look in on."

"Yeah, go do your thing," said Darcy. "Say hi for me. Kick Thanos in the balls, too."

"Oh, I intend to," he said with a menacing smile, before blinking out of existence.

Tony stared at the empty space for a moment, wondering about things.

"You know he meant you, right?" Darcy asked him. "What I was protecting. He didn't want you anywhere near Thanos. He didn't want anything that reminded him of you, anywhere near him. Because he was worried he couldn't pull it off if he thought too much about you. I'm figuring out how much he thinks about Hel when he sees me, and no matter whether he meant all that 'you're great, Darcy, you can challenge Thanos' bullshit he fed me, that's why he really asked me to show up. Keep everything focused on her, instead of you."

"Yeah," said Tony, then he smiled sadly at her. "I know how much I mean to him. That's never the issue. The issue is getting him to realize he deserves to be happy."

Darcy winced. "Yeah. Yeah, that could be tough."

* * *

Loki materialized on Helheim to see that the illusions were down, and Hel had given Thanos the ability to speak and to move his body only above the waist. The image nearly gave him hysterics right then and there. He quickly stepped inside the walls so that his inability to breathe would not prove a liability.

"Hel!" he cried, joyful and relieved, and she ran to him and embraced him. She was her grown self now, in a black dress of rich and colliding textures that changed with the angle of viewing.

"Father. How you worry yourself over me. I am never in any danger, you know that, not anymore." She laughed lightly.

"Oh, but wait until you learn what Darcy has managed to do with her magic," said Loki. "The possibilities are... startling. Considering your curiosity, I think I will continue to worry over you."

Hel looked intrigued, and a small shake of Loki's head told her they would speak of that later. "How do you find your new prisoner?" he said instead.

"He is really quite amusing," said Hel as they turned back in Thanos's direction. "He does not understand how you misled him so."

Loki chuckled, looking at Thanos. "I am the Liesmith," he said. "And I did what I so often do. I lied."

Thanos looked at him in fury and disbelief. "How? The gem cannot be deceived!"

"Everything with a mind to understand can be deceived," Loki said. "The gem has no volition, no perspective. Everything the gem found in my mind was truth, pure and simple. It was your own understanding of what you saw, your addition of context that misled you." The Liesmith smiled. "The trick to a good lie is knowing what your target would like to believe. You wanted a weakness. And so I gave you one."

"Your daughter is far from unwell, anything but defenseless!"

"While she is here, yes, and so I do believe her untouchable. But the other things you learned are quite true, as well. The thing about this little bubble of unreality is that it changes all the rules. And no one can quite grasp them before they arrive to see for themselves that they are quite at the mercy of my daughter."

Thanos raged against his confinement, snarling at them and lashing out with his arms, but they stayed just beyond his reach. "You will not hold me forever!" he threatened. "I will find a way to destroy you both!"

"I think not," said Loki. "This is a prison of your own building. As you would use my own mind against me, so I use your own menace to cripple you. I tried. I tried to put you somewhere where you'd be content. But you would not stay on Earth, where I left you. You had your chance, Thanos. But you were not content to stay mortal on a planet teeming with mortals. And so you end here. Helheim, my daughter's realm. The humans' legends call it the realm of death. But that is not at all what it is. There is no death here. No death, no destruction, no change, no creation... **no entropy.**" Loki grinned, huge and dry and terrible.

Thanos all but choked on his own horror. Then Hel waved her arm, and he froze in place, and she dismissed his presence by cloaking the place in illusion and setting him firmly behind a wall.

"I could have far to much fun, playing with him," she said, walking along a handsome wood corridor with her father beside her. "But tell me more about what our ever-surprising Darcy has done now."

"Based on her abilities, what I saw, and what she told me about it, I believe she has managed to suspend entropy for a body outside of Helheim..."

Hel and Loki became engrossed in discussion, walking in Hel's home, Thanos's existence all but forgotten.


	8. Worthy of Love

**Chapter 8: Worthy of Love**

Agent Hill had been hanging back with the civilians to coordinate evacuation to one of the remaining pods, if necessary. Now, she was working with Peyton and the J's to locate whatever was stopping the dimensional gates from functioning. Once they found it, Jarvis contacted Tony, who had been staring at the machine that had held Loki prisoner with a frustrated intensity.

They destroyed the thing neatly enough, and Tony put it aside to study later, and the civilians, prisoners and SHIELD agents were sent back through to Earth. The final count was five deaths, three in the initial attack on the resort and two during the fighting once Loki and Darcy had arrived. Tony took that the way he usually did, adding it to the stack of reasons he felt sick when he took out the record of things he'd been responsible for, the reasons he drank.

Hulk would have stayed to play for longer, but he'd noticed that Clint was injured, and he insisted on shrinking down so that Bruce could take care of him properly. Bruce ended up helping Clint through the door back to Earth for a proper medical checkup, and some tests to find out how likely the archer was to develop silicosis.

Finally just Darcy and Tony stood in the abandoned moon base, looking contemplatively around at the empty chaos of smashed things and alien machinery.

"You sticking here?" Darcy asked, slightly worried.

"Yeah, I need to talk to Loki, and figure out what to do with that thing," he said, indicating the machine which still held the stone from the staff. "Got the J's to keep me company, and the suit. You can head home."

"Okay, yeah, I gotta go tell the internet some stuff," she agreed. "Take care of yourself."

He nodded absently, only paying half attention. She shook her head and went into the lobby, stepping through the main hotel door and back into Tony's workshop in Stark Tower.

It was, as he predicted, only a few minutes later that Loki showed up.

"You waited for me," he said.

Tony shrugged. "Well _I_ sure as hell don't know how this thing works or whether poking it will do very bad things to me or my moonbase," he said, gesturing at the machine.

"It is still set to derive power only from the mind that it touches, and I slipped its clutches there," Loki said absently, examining the thing with interest and slight horror. "It would have done nothing unless you made the idiotic mistake of touching the stone." The frost giant's hand darted out suddenly and crushed a cluster of components to dust, scattering the pieces. "Now it can no longer act upon a mind, but only show what you give it to see."

"Handy," said Tony.

"Why are you still here?" Loki asked.

"Because you needed me to be."

"Not enough." Loki took on his Aesir skin again, looking at Tony with piercing green eyes. "I know what I did. I saw the panic in your eyes, the nightmares you relived in that moment. I hurt you, and you would do better to refuse my company."

"It is enough. You get to need things, Loki. You need me, and I need you." Tony still examined the machine while he talked, but Loki knew very well how little that meant about how much of his focus was on the conversation.

"But I am not who you think I am; I am not the person you know. I would have thought you realized that when you saw how I misled Thanos."

"Yeah, about that," said Tony, glancing his way again, not seeming to care whether the eyes he caught were red or green. "Neat trick. How'd you do that, make him believe the machine would trap you, then just slip right out? I didn't really have to pull that hard."

Trust Tony to see to the real crux of the matter, thought Loki. The lie had been a simple enough trick, but the key to how he'd managed to be one thing to Tony and such a different one to Thanos was all in that shift, quick and clean like the flick of a switch.

"Watch the screen," said Loki, and he put his hand upon the stone, and that storm appeared, somewhat calmed but still fierce. Then he shifted skins, blue bleeding out over his face and hands, armor disappearing in favor of soft sea green cotton. The sky cleared, so blue it was near unbelievable, sunlight slanting across the dense white clouds and somehow Tony could tell the air tasted of snow.

"That's Joshua's mind?" he asked.

Loki nodded once, solemnly, with a hint of a somewhat edged smile.

Tony shook his head. "That's wild," he said, coming closer and wrapping an armored arm around Loki's waist. "Now show me what's inside your head when you're being Rhea."

Loki turned somewhat widened eyes on his partner. "You truly wish to see more?" he asked.

"Always," he replied, squeezing Loki's waist just a bit.

So Loki changed, female curves and a linen shift, and there was a hotter color to the sky on the screen, no clouds, and the chirping of insects. There were fields of crops and an ineffable sense of ancient sites of worship.

Tony smiled. "Seems about right," he said.

Loki tensed and tore herself away, away from both the machine and Tony. "How can you be so calm?" she said. "You saw what I am."

"Honey, I didn't see anything that bothered me."

"Then you did not understand!" Loki turned away, scowl and armor and male form coming back to guard, to warn.

"Loki." Tony put his hand on the stone, looking into Loki's eyes unflinchingly. The screen bloomed with fire; the roar and chaos and fury of it was no less than Loki's own storm. Then Tony hit his suit release, leaving him in black jeans and an REM tee. The fire calmed, but didn't lessen, gaining rhythm, the thrill of an engine. Gears worked and pistons slammed.

Loki drank this in, stared in wonder at the beauty, the power, the openness and trust this man showed him. After everything. After his moon palace had been destroyed, after Loki had thrown him aside like so much detritus - after Loki had at last been forced to show all his cards, his ruthlessness and his desperation.

"Of course," he said. "I should have known." Loki closed his eyes, tired to the bone, and came into Tony's welcoming arms.

"Now what was all that about?" said Tony, tangling his fingers in Loki's hair and pulling until Loki was looking him in the eye. "Why would you even think that would scare me off?"

"I did not fully trust you to accept me for all that I am, good and evil, sane and mad."

Tony shook his head. "Two years, Springbok. It's been more than _two years._ You thought I wasn't gonna figure you out?"

Loki pressed a kiss to Tony's temple. "Darling, I once spent ten years in female form, living with a man in Greece. He never once suspected I was anything more than a human woman who enjoyed his company."

"So... what? You thought I loved some kind of... illusion? Some guy you just made up in your spare time?"

Loki shrugged. "More or less."

Tony looked completely scandalized. "You still underestimate me that much?" His expression turned darker, angrier. "Then what the hell were you thinking with the silver apple stunt?"

"It was, in a way, a test. When I did, in fact, wake, I could only assume that the requirements were rather less... stringent than some would imagine."

"That was a test?! ...You damn idiot, you _expected_ to die!"

Loki made a face.

"It was a test, and I _passed,_ and you just threw out the data! That's not even _close_ to being fair!"

Loki sighed.

"Yeah, I love Josh," Tony said, pulling his partner closer. "But I love Loki too. Okay? Every goddamn idiot part of you."

That prompted Loki to smile. "That feeling is quite mutual, I assure you."

Tony snorted. "Admittedly, I probably deserve that."

"Every single day," Loki replied.

There was silence for a moment, then Tony insisted, "But you are Josh, too, you know."

"Blind," commented Loki. "Joshua Albastru is a lie."

"Real enough to get you out of that trap, though," Tony said. "A whole mind with a totally different energy to it. There's something there, some part of you. Even if it's only who you wanna be sometimes. 'Cause I'm a great believer in acting like a hero until you somehow fake it so well you're actually a hero."

Loki sighed again. "I will never be a hero. Because whatever reality Joshua has gained, it does not stop Loki from being dangerous, devious, and ruthless. What I want to be stands ever opposed to what I must be. And that flexibility, I cannot sacrifice. To defeat a monster such as Thanos, it is often necessary to become such a monster, and I had that capacity within me, make no mistake, from the beginning."

"That's not... Loki, listen. Yeah, you had to go to some dark places, but you _always came back._"

"Thrice I have bested him, and this time I leave him with nothing. I leave him with Hel, in his own personal hell where his love, Death, can never tread. I reveled in his agony at the realization. And you tell me I am not a monster?"

"What I see is someone who can shape himself. Who can do whatever it takes. And honey, you'd better believe that Iron Man is a monster I made to get shit done. Because I don't always wanna be the guy who'd burn people alive without hesitating. But I needed to be that guy. Sometimes I still do. And the only reason I can look at myself in the mirror is I can take him off at the end of the day, just be the mechanic. I'm not denying you've got teeth. You've got a monster on a leash. You're Loki, you always will be, and I'm Iron Man. But Josh. You came back to me. And we can be just Josh and Tony, and it isn't any less real than they are. Okay?"

"There's a difference. Joshua was the invention, for me. You were _born_ Tony Stark."

"And you were born blue. What's your point?"

Loki sighed, but there was a hint of laughter in it.

"Come on," Tony said. "Let's go home."

* * *

Bruce and Peter were taking apart the device that had jammed the dimensional doorways on the moon, trying to learn how it worked and how it could be counteracted. It was getting late, but this was important to both of them; the moon was a second (or, in Peter's case, third) home.

Around 11:10 Clint came by to see how they were doing and drop off some granola bars and taunt Peter about his last win in their video game rivalry and rub Bruce's shoulder in a little more than a friendly manner. Peter didn't think he'd ever seen anybody both smile and frown at the same time quite so distinctly as Bruce did then.

"So, uh," Peter prodded, after the archer had left, "you like him?"

Bruce continued working without a word.

"Because he seems to like you pretty much."

"It's more complicated than that," Bruce said

"Hmm," Peter breathed.

The eloquent silence prompted Bruce to look up. "What?" he asked.

"Well, it kinda always _is,_" Peter said, spreading his fingers in a gesture of universal complications.

Bruce shook his head. "Not like this."

"Psh, whatever." Peter went back to his work.

Bruce put down the scanner he'd been holding. "I can't," he said. "Yes, I like him, all right? But that's never the most important factor for me. I have to be able to live with myself. I _have_ to be able to live with myself, because the alternative isn't an option for me. And yes, things with the Hulk have been better, but I'm still not ready to take that risk, I may never be ready, and I don't want him waiting for me."

Peter screwed up his face, an expression Bruce wasn't sure if he'd picked up from Tony or if it was somehow inherent in snarky superhero engineers. "Isn't that his call?" the boy asked.

Bruce rubbed at his eyes and sighed. "Yes, okay. But it's a _bad call._ It's not just the Hulk anymore, there's the mind magic thing too; how can that be good for him, after everything he's been through? It's not. I'm not."

Something snapped together, came full circle in Peter's head. "Hey, hey," he said, catching Bruce's wandering eyes with his. "I wanna tell you something. Okay? Something my aunt told me. She's always right, she's the best. I wasn't gonna ask Gwen out because some stupid things happened, I got her caught up in the mess I started. And this is what she said: If there's anything you are, it's good. Bruce, if there's anything you are, it's good. Otherwise you wouldn't be trying so hard."

Bruce let his face sink down into his hands as he absorbed that. The more people trusted him, cared about him, the more he panicked, because that wasn't the natural order of things, that wasn't how things were supposed to go. But at the same time, it was far too rare a feeling for him to have positive emotions in his well, deep and always threatening to overflow as it was. He didn't know what to do with it all, so he processed it as he would the rage, sealing it over with calm and experiencing it bit by bit, steadily weaving it in with thoughts.

After what Clint had told him about Agent Coulson, he knew the archer was unlikely to give up, but also unlikely to press; Bruce couldn't change his nature or his modus operandi. He thought that he had better get used to the idea of the archer waiting for him.

It really wasn't such a bad thought, just rather overwhelming, but that, after all, was his specialty.

"Okay," he said finally. "I'll give it some thought."

Peter smiled rather smugly at him, then asked a question about radiation, returning them to the work.


End file.
